Facebook ban

[otandelapaz]

Facebook recently announces that they will be banning ads related to bitcoin and ICOs. This is because there are a lot of scams out there that uses their platform.

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-ads-policy-improving-integrity-and-security-of-financial-product-and-services-ads

I understand that most ICOs and other offerings starts here via the ANN and BOUNTY threads. Offering rewards to people who support them by advertising their projects (e.g. Facebook sharing etc.)

Is it possible that the Forum itself thru its moderators to identify and reject possible ICOs and other offerings "scams"? So it will not be posted here and hunters will not be victims of it.

If we can stop or at least limit those scams here, it will not go to other platforms (by being shared by hunters) and making a bad name to crypto-currency. Good day to all and thank you.
   

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[hilariousetc]

Theymos thought about some sort of ICO accreditation service previously: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2070397.msg20678014#msg20678014

I think they should all be banned from listing threads here or at the very least forced to pay some sort of fee to make their announcements as they cause probably 95% of spam and workload here and staff are left to clean up their mess whilst they don't follow the rules and rake in millions in the process. The longer we let them get away with doing nothing and letting them run campaigns for free paying people in the crapcoin they've created out of thin air they will never change and continue to be greedy and lazy. Most of them are straight up scams anyway and they're only going to get more prolific the longer we let them get away with theft and fraud here.

[InvoKing]

Theymos thought about some sort of ICO accreditation service previously: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2070397.msg20678014#msg20678014

I think they should all be banned from listing threads here or at the very least forced to pay some sort of fee to make their announcements...-snip-

I think that we talked about this issue from a while in a topic. Imo, I suggest a sort of insurance, every ico/project should pay a fine ~1 BTC in order to post its ANN and bounty topics. This fine should be escrowed by a third trusted person or a staff member and in case of proven scam, the scammed persons could get a part (or all if total amount <1 BTC) of their initial investment.

[Jr.]

Let's hope the Facebook owner changes his mind, I mean, there's a lot of crypto and coins that may help some people, and Facebook is one way of letting the other people know about their projects....

[SayNumo]

Just wanted to address one thing:

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-ads-policy-improving-integrity-and-security-of-financial-product-and-services-ads

I understand that most ICOs and other offerings starts here via the ANN and BOUNTY threads. Offering rewards to people who support them by advertising their projects (e.g. Facebook sharing etc.)

Facebook banned advertising for ICOs, token sales, and anything relating to cryptocurrency, bitcoin and altcoin alike. Advertising includes paid campaigns and sponsored posts, including text-only, images, video etc. Nowhere in the press release does it say that organic (free) posts are affected. If you post, share or comment on crypto-related topics without trying to promote your post or launch an ad campaign on the Facebook ad network, you should be fine unless you are spamming.

Some people on the forum reported their posts being removed. This is most likely due to their posts being reported by other users, not deleted automatically by the system because of the recent ad ban. These are two different things.

Writing high-quality posts on Facebook and sharing updates from an ICO Facebook page still works. (For now!)

[otandelapaz]

Facebook banned advertising for ICOs, token sales, and anything relating to cryptocurrency, bitcoin and altcoin alike. Advertising includes paid campaigns and sponsored posts, including text-only, images, video etc. Nowhere in the press release does it say that organic (free) posts are affected. If you post, share or comment on crypto-related topics without trying to promote your post or launch an ad campaign on the Facebook ad network, you should be fine unless you are spamming.

Some people on the forum reported their posts being removed. This is most likely due to their posts being reported by other users, not deleted automatically by the system because of the recent ad ban. These are two different things.

Writing high-quality posts on Facebook and sharing updates from an ICO Facebook page still works. (For now!)

Yes that is true. But the idea is, if we can avoid being "used" by these scammers it will be better for the community and for crypto-currency in general.
Those organic posts being reported and removed probably people already have a stigma seeing anything related to crypto offerings. Even if the ICO you're promoting is legit, people will instantly think that it's another scam.

[SayNumo]

Facebook banned advertising for ICOs, token sales, and anything relating to cryptocurrency, bitcoin and altcoin alike. Advertising includes paid campaigns and sponsored posts, including text-only, images, video etc. Nowhere in the press release does it say that organic (free) posts are affected. If you post, share or comment on crypto-related topics without trying to promote your post or launch an ad campaign on the Facebook ad network, you should be fine unless you are spamming.

Some people on the forum reported their posts being removed. This is most likely due to their posts being reported by other users, not deleted automatically by the system because of the recent ad ban. These are two different things.

Writing high-quality posts on Facebook and sharing updates from an ICO Facebook page still works. (For now!)

Yes that is true. But the idea is, if we can avoid being "used" by these scammers it will be better for the community and for crypto-currency in general.
Those organic posts being reported and removed probably people already have a stigma seeing anything related to crypto offerings. Even if the ICO you're promoting is legit, people will instantly think that it's another scam.

Of course, I agree with you that it would be so much better for the community if scammers were banished. As for the stigma, yes and no — the whole point of ads is to reach new people who may not know a lot about crypto, and it is on the ICO team to make sure they come across as professional and trustworthy as possible. Which, I admit, is difficult right now.

I just wanted to address the misconception about bans on organic posts, so that people aren't afraid to engage in discussions, all bounties and marketing aside.

[gopaljiverma]

This is a big news and it would be interesting to see the impact on current prices. This news should push the rices down for few days but in the long run it is better. It would help to weed out scammers and fraud companies trying to fool people interested in investing in crypto. Such people tarnish the image of genuine coins as well.

[Murloc]

I remember how google claimed that they are banning all scam websites fast asap (not ICOs). This thing ended up with nothing. Later I've checked that the fake ads of myetherwalet instead of myetherwallet for the next couple months constantly reporting it (btw it was already at the times when everyone could be banned for something like "hate speech" or anything else). The fact that  google and facebook ads can't be properly filtered proves me that they are not deserve their place on their market.

[LeGaulois]

It's something I suggested some time ago last year... The forum could introduce different memberships to the users,  similar to "Cooper"
Most of the large forums have 1 or more memberships (especially in IM/SEO forums for example, yeah I know IM is not BTC)

- One to allow all the ICOs/Altcoins to get listed in the forum, just a one time fee. If they don't have enough money to buy a membership in a forum then just LOL

With doing quick verification to check the project it would be better than nothing..
Off topic but a membership for the average users:

- Another one for the members who want to get access to a private section, remove the captcha or any other advantages you can think about

-  Or this one that ChipMixer suggested some weeks back

Is there an official .onion proxy of BitcoinTalk that bypass Cloudflare? We do sometimes get support request PMs.

How about BitcoinTalk Pro accounts with monthly payments, private proxy without Cloudflare and captchas, bot access?

[cryptowhatnow]

I'm still seeing paid ads for ICOs on my Facebook account

[wumBowo]

I'm still seeing paid ads for ICOs on my Facebook account

same here it might be the ads that used the service on facebook before the announcements published

[Welsh]

It's something I suggested some time ago last year... The forum could introduce different memberships to the users,  similar to "Cooper"
Most of the large forums have 1 or more memberships (especially in IM/SEO forums for example, yeah I know IM is not BTC)

- One to allow all the ICOs/Altcoins to get listed in the forum, just a one time fee. If they don't have enough money to buy a membership in a forum then just LOL

With doing quick verification to check the project it would be better than nothing..
Off topic but a membership for the average users:

- Another one for the members who want to get access to a private section, remove the captcha or any other advantages you can think about

-  Or this one that ChipMixer suggested some weeks back

Is there an official .onion proxy of BitcoinTalk that bypass Cloudflare? We do sometimes get support request PMs.

How about BitcoinTalk Pro accounts with monthly payments, private proxy without Cloudflare and captchas, bot access?

I don't think introducing a rank would prevent them though. As Hilariousandco said they rake in millions and wouldn't care about paying a small one time fee in to enable them to post their announcements. A service which offered certification would be the best route, though this would need to be run by a person who is considered extremely trustworthy and should probably be double checked by a independent member too as it would likely be susceptible to back handers.

Theymos thought about some sort of ICO accreditation service previously: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2070397.msg20678014#msg20678014

I think they should all be banned from listing threads here or at the very least forced to pay some sort of fee to make their announcements as they cause probably 95% of spam and workload here and staff are left to clean up their mess whilst they don't follow the rules and rake in millions in the process.  

I feel banning them completely wouldn't be the ideal solution, but as I said above I don't think a rank would do much other than preventing the people who don't want to invest anything which you'll see a couple from time to time using free domains etc.

The amount of money they receive through presales and 'donations' is insane and they would very likely be willing to pay a one time fee to be able to post. It could be a requirement anyway, just to cut a little percentage of the users who aren't willing to invest a little into their project.

[LeGaulois]

Yeah, after thinking twice you're right, it won't do anything, paying the fee will be peanuts

[hilariousetc]

I don't think introducing a rank would prevent them though. As Hilariousandco said they rake in millions and wouldn't care about paying a small one time fee in to enable them to post their announcements.

My suggestion is more about them financially contributing to the mess and workload they cause here. Why should I or other staff members be essentially running campaigns for them for free because that's what happens when they decide to pay anyone for anything and do nothing about spam and this can't and shouldn't be acceptable or tolerated. With that being said, these icos only take in the money here after they've made their thread and at the moment it costs nothing to do that. If there's a substantial investment fee involved beforehand a lot will think twice and putting money upfront shows you at least they believe in it to some extent and not just a scam they've knocked up in five minutes because they've got nothing to lose.

The amount of money they receive through presales and 'donations' is insane and they would very likely be willing to pay a one time fee to be able to post. It could be a requirement anyway, just to cut a little percentage of the users who aren't willing to invest a little into their project.

If this is the case then they shouldn't have any issue in buying the membership. Most of them seem to be buying the Copper Rank already so I don't think them purchasing a higher rank to be able to create a thread in the ICO section would be an issue.

[danielgouldman]

We've been running ads for our token sale and actually took down the FB ads because they were one of the worst performing.  And I run FB ads all day long for other things because it's #1.

Maybe I just couldn't target people on FB properly for crypto.

[JanEmil]

Good for bitcointalk.org users. Bounty value go up because it get more expensive to hit the target audience.

[lasencja]

Fb ban some link website in my post telling me is this spam and cant be edit.

[timerland]

It's no surprise that most of the ICOs listed on this forum are going to be just shitty projects in general, if not an outright scam. I remember when the e-coins were a trend at the time, there were hundreds of clones of the same coin being advertised and ANNs being put out every single week.

Facebook did ban crypto ads, and that has hit the bitcoin price pretty badly so it seems.

I agree with hilariousetc, I think that there should be at least a fee that ICOs pay to get their ANN listed on bitcointalk. Otherwise there is absolutely no restrictions to posting it. The problem with moderators filtering out scams is that they will be accused as biased, and there are simply too many to look through at the moment. A fee should reduce the amount of shitcoins advertising on forum by a large amount.

[xLays]

They got the idea from our administration Theymos. I remember that bitcointalk didn't now allow to advertise those ICOs.

I read it in auction bitcointalk advertising.